Garden Notes

Strawberry garden on rainy day

My childhood memory of picking strawberries, both the wild variety and the ones that grew in our family’s strawberry bed, made me want to grow some in my own yard. I purchased starter strawberry plants and set them into my raised garden. The plants did really well. I got a lot of strawberries and the plants were multiplying by sending out runners. I did notice that the strawberries, although tasty and plentiful were much smaller than I remembered from our family garden.

After about 3 years, my husband decided we should expand the garden on the north side of the house. He wanted to contain the downspout extensions from the rain gutters within the garden and eliminate the chore of removing them before mowing the lawn.

Suddenly I had a new garden to plant that was about 6 feet by 15 feet. I decided to move the strawberries to this new area. After the initial shock of transplanting, the strawberries did well. I got a lot of berries and they were much bigger than I had ever gotten in the raised bed. However, as the strawberry bed became jumbled with runners and new plants, it became harder and harder to keep the weeds down and after about 3 years, it was a big weedy mess.

I decided to take the plants out, get rid of the weeds as best I could and dig in the compost that I had been making in my two compost bins. I had visions of huge, beautiful strawberries. Big mistake!

That compost was made from weeds around the yard, plant trimmings, kitchen scraps and coffee grounds — lots and lots of coffee grounds. Apparently all that coffee made the garden too acidic for the strawberries. They hated it and struggled along for a whole year, always one step away from plant suicide. When I finally figured out what the problem was, I added gypsum with lime in an effort to sweeten the soil. That was last fall and until this spring, I had no idea if I had solved the problem.

Strawberry plant with small berries

When winter was finally over and the garden came back to life, my strawberries looked very happy. Even with our cold wet spring, they are busy producing strawberries and we look forward to a great harvest. If all goes well and the strawberry bed fills up with plants, next year we should have the best berry crop ever!

So I guess the moral of the story is that while strawberries are very forgiving about being moved about and having to adapt to different conditions — they just don’t like coffee. Who would have ever guessed that?